A Scar I Could Not Heal
by crazykitsune17
Summary: There are some scars the body cannot heal. On a sleepless night one of many, Kurama remembers one... Oneshot, please review.


**A Scar I Could Not Heal**

_by crazykitsune17_

Disclaimer: You bet your bum this fic is disclaimed. I don't own Yu Yu Hakusho

**-X-**

It was another one of my sleepless nights. Oh, don't sound alarmed; my nights are often sleepless. I have always had trouble sleeping, so I suppose I am used to them. If it's not too much physical activity, then it's too much caffeine or too much work… or too many thoughts. Sometimes my sleeplessness has no cause at all. Tonight it was too much thought.

Actually it is not my thoughts so much that keep me up, it is my insomnia that keeps me up, and I just fill in the time with thoughts.

Tonight's thought theater brings me back to when I was fifteen. I return that age often. It was, after all, a very eventful one.

It was my first year of high school. It was the year I teamed up with demons to lie and steal. It was the year I met Yusuke. It was the year I joined the Reikai Tantei.

As if that wasn't enough, that was the year my mother almost died, and the year my body stubbornly refuses to forget.

Interesting how I would say "my body", isn't it? Yes, at the age of fifteen, I was going through puberty, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the body's best storyteller – the skin. My skin has never forgotten the age of fifteen.

As some know, my mother had fallen ill that year. Deathly ill. As some also know, I love my mother. She raised me, loves me, and unfortunately, is deceived by me. She knows nothing of my past, and for that I feel guilty. My guilt and my love for her is what begins this story my body retells on this sleepless, reminiscent night.

It was the first night Mother had been admitted to the hospital. Since it was only my mother and me living at the house at the time, I was all alone. I could not stay with Mother at her side every single night. They had to run tests on her, she needed undisturbed sleep, visiting hours didn't stretch that far. On many occasions I had to bribe the nurse to let me stay an extra ten minutes longer.

"Please, Nurse Hajime, I will give you one hundred yen if you let me stay a while longer," I had pleaded, and since Nurse Hajime was still struggling with medical school, she took the money and granted me a few precious extra minutes. During those extra ten to fifteen minutes, I would hold my mother's icy hand and grit my teeth telling her that everything would be all right tomorrow.

Ah, I had lied to her again. She had only gotten worse.

Of course, thinking ahead of time as I usually do, I had a plan all ready. I had teamed up with two rogue demons – Gouki and an old acquaintance named Hiei. They were ruthless demons with their hearts blackened and souls set on stealing a certain set of artifacts from the vault in Reikai. Among those items was the Mirror of Forlorn Hope.

I knew what the Forlorn Hope was. I knew of its powers and of its consequences. I knew I had to go through with the plan, steal the Forlorn Hope and make a wish on a full-mooned night in order for my mother to live – my ultimate goal. I wanted Mother to live and be happy, regardless of what happened to me. I wanted to atone for my sins and die without regret.

I won't lie. There were times when I had my doubts about going through with the plan. It was not that I doubted my ability to be able to actually steal the Forlorn Hope – I was Youko, after all – but it was my doubt that I would have the courage to actually give up my life for someone else. In my years as Youko the spirit fox, I thought of mainly myself; it was a necessity to be selfish in the demon world. As a human I also thought mainly of myself. No one else in the world really needed me – not until my mother fell ill, that is. You can easily see how I had my doubts.

_Could I really die for the sake of my mother?_ My mind said, automatically, "Yes! You can! It's the noble thing to do", but instinctively my mind said, "I'm not really sure. I've never died before, never experienced death, and I don't think I'm quite ready to face it at such a young age. Perhaps my mother was meant to die, and I was meant to live…"

The clash of instinct and autonomy had kept me up nearly every night, much like my thoughts and memories keep me awake now. But those thoughts, those internal mind conversations debating nobility and fear, were far more powerful than the ones I have now and far more destructive.

So destructive were they that I not only lost sleep over them, but I lost blood as well.

It's a shameful moment of my past – my fall from grace, my faltering of stability. My mind had crumpled, my will shattered, and my sanity simply lost for a period of time. I remember that night – the night before the full moon, before my plan was to be put into action – I had been crying. I don't cry often, but the stress and the confusion and the struggle going on inside of me was almost more than I could bear.

I had just gotten home from the hospital. Home into the empty house so dark and stale. No smell of food coming from the kitchen, no nice, lived-in smell that comfortable houses always have. No music playing from the stereo in my mother's room. Just the cold, echoing footsteps as I entered the hallway and took off my shoes. This was when the tears had started to fall.

I had locked myself in my bedroom – though why I bothered to lock it when no one was home is still a mystery to me – and as I cried, I argued with myself some more.

"Can you _really_ go through with this?"

"Mother looked really ill today. She is nearing her death. You have to act quickly."

"She may even die tonight."

"You have a little over twenty-four hours. Make your choice."

"You already told the Spirit Detective you would be there. You have to do it! There's no backing out now!"

"You're spineless. You're pathetic."

What had originally started as just two voices arguing against each other soon multiplied into several. The voices all meshed together into one loud, painful cacophony. It grew so loud, I remember that I had clamped my hands over my ears, the tears still streaming down my face, dropped down to my knees and clenched my teeth, willing them all to stop.

I leaned my head back and screamed.

I had just wanted them to go away. I wanted the noise to stop. I wanted the pain gone. I needed to fix this. I needed to calm down, relax, feel at peace and perhaps even normal again.

I grabbed a razor from my tool drawer.

I remember the deep, shuddering breath I took just before the blade had touched my skin. I remember that the back of my neck was damp from the sweat and that my ghostly white hands were shaking. I remember that my school uniform had dark splotches along the material from where my tears had landed.

I remember – and will never forget – the color of my deep, dark crimson blood spilled over my ivory wrist.

Remembering now, I recall how… surreal… the act had felt. It was as if I were watching the blood trickle from somebody else's wrist, not mine. I would never do a stupid thing like hurting myself; this had to be someone else's wrist that was bleeding, a small drop falling onto my thighs. It didn't hurt at all. In fact I felt a lot better. Just watching the blood was transfixing. In mutilating myself I was able to forget all of my other problems and doubts and fear. I was able to just sit and stare, fascinated, as I bled.

As some know, I did in fact go through with the plan to save my mother. I did ask the Forlorn Hope to grant my wish of my mother's health and happiness. However, the Spirit Detective – with whom I was barely acquainted at the time – worked his impulsive magic and spared all of our lives. To this day I am still eternally grateful.

However, nobody except for you knows about the thin white scar I am tracing with my finger right now. I really plan to keep that way. It's a shameful part of my past, yet an important one that my mind as well as my skin can never forget.

It's a message to me to always be strong and to do the right thing even when you have your doubts. It's a message to not be afraid of honor and nobility – as if the essence of Kuwabara was not enough to convince me; I have learned a lot about honor from that man – and it is a message never to repeat the same mistake again.

I don't like scars. Not many people do. Especially frenzied scars, scars of passion, scars of stupidity like mine is. Usually I can get rid of the scars I earn during battles by using a botanical salve or just my natural healing powers, but this scar is the one scar I cannot heal. Potions and concoctions will not work on it, nor will my body naturally heal it. It is something that will always stick with me, and as for why it always will I have come up with many conclusions.

Perhaps nothing will work on it because it is my destiny to have such a reminder on me at all times. It is a good thing to always remember the past, is it not? Pure mental memories are not enough; sometimes remembrance must be skin-deep. Perhaps my power is just not enough to heal a scar I inflicted myself.

Perhaps I am to learn from it. But that shouldn't be necessary. I already have. I put away the very same razor blade that I used that night two years ago and close my eyes, waiting for sleep.

**-X-**

A/N: Okay, I'm sure you are all wondering, "What the hell was that?" Well, long story short, I was reading this story by Nyoko Iso and it contained Kurama saying the line, "I feel emo." I'm sure you can all make the connection that I just had to write something about emo!cutter!Kurama after reading that. This was such a product. I tried to make it work, I really did, so I'm sorry if it's not all that plausible or good or anything. Please offer me some concrit or just a review, whatever floats your boat; comments are much appreciated, and thank you for reading.

-crazykitsune17-


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